CESAIRE PRIMED FOR CAREER SHIFT, HOPING TO BE NFL ASSISTANT

MOBILE, Ala. 
Coming to the annual NFL festival known as the Senior Bowl was something of a mercy mission this year. I needed to try to save Jacques Cesaire’s life, his family, his health.

If you know Cesaire, you know it was a fool’s errand.

But this is one of my favorite people, one of a lot of people’s favorite people. And while I hold NFL assistants in high esteem, it’s a vocation that, really, should be reserved for the chosen few — like Marines or pirates.

Cesaire, who the Chargers released in September after nine seasons and 66 starts at defensive end, made about $9 million over his career and has a bunch of it left.

He does have a young family and figures he needs to work at some point, but that need is not urgent.

This is a passion play.

Cesaire gave a try to the dark side, doing some segments for local TV stations this fall. Continuing in that less demanding job has been the advice of many friends and former coaches. And Cesaire did enjoy it — to an extent.

“The media, it’s not a team,” Cesaire said. “What is the goal? The goal is to get the next great story. That’s not exciting to me. What’s exciting to me is having a group of guys and working together and having a plan to work toward achieving a goal. And when you do, it’s a little slice of heaven. And when you don’t, guess what, you get to do it all over again.”

I wasn’t the first to try an impossible task.

Jacques Cesaire has decided to officially retire as a player and try to become an NFL assistant coach. One of the nicest, most grounded, family-oriented men to walk this earth wants to do one of the most time-consuming, pressure-filled, uncertain jobs on earth.

No, Jacques, no.

“You’re the second person today to try to do that,” Cesaire said with a laugh.

He’s at the Senior Bowl to introduce himself to the myriad coaches and executives here in hopes of landing a job. This week is officially a time for NFL teams to watch draft prospect practice, but it is also known as the ultimate job fair, coming as it does at a time immediately following widespread firings. (A few recently terminated Chargers assistants are here trying to network.)

Cesaire said he could have tried to attack this job search differently, staying home and sending résumés, making calls. But that’s not his way.

A man comes to the NFL undrafted out of Division II Southern Connecticut State and lasts almost a decade, he does it with elbow grease.

“When I do something, I start at the ground floor and work my way up,” he said. “That’s all I know how to do.”

Look, Cesaire will be an excellent coach. Anyone who played with him said he was as pure a technician as they’d ever seen. And he made mentoring young players as central to his career as practicing. Corey Liuget and Kendall Reyes were just the latest two guys drafted to replace Cesaire, and pretty much the first calls either of them got after becoming Chargers was from Cesaire offering assistance in everything from workouts to finding lodging.